Are you planning to launch your startup? If yes, then be prepared to spend a lot of time, energy, caffeine and of course lots of money on it. You must know that the entire process of launching a startup business is tough, even painful at times.
A great amount of time goes into the venture that is oftentimes fueled by the mix of anxiety, expectation, excitement, and fear. It’s natural for you to feel that your complete future hangs in the balance as you give your 200% towards starting your business, dreaming of how your life might change once your brand is successful.
Unfortunately, not all startups know how to gain brand recognition and get noticed. I have observed that a good number of companies just stick to web designing, logo designing, and social media promotion while launching their brands.
But do you think that is enough? Well, it is not.
In today’s post, I am going to share with you the top 3 mistakes startup entrepreneurs make while branding their businesses and how you can avoid them.
Before starting that discussion, let me first tell you a bit in detail about what a brand is actually.
Your brand is the experience your proffer to your customers. The quintessence of branding is the relation between a company and its customers, learning to comprehend the nature of customers and why exactly they like your product. Once you understand the customer behavior and what drives them to your business, you can promptly create your brand’s recognition.
Now without further ado, let me tell you why some startups fail in boosting branding and generating revenue.
These are the top reasons:
Ignoring Customer Connection
Entrepreneurs spend a lot of time on creating their business concepts and making them perfect. But while creating brand identity and generating brand awareness, they forget to ask for feedback from their customers or ignore any sort of negative feedback.
Depending on Assumption
The branding startup entrepreneurs do is usually based on their assumptions that customers love their businesses if the products are backed by the right website, logo, and marketing. An existing company name can help with this: after all, how does a franchise work? By building on brand recognition that has already proven successful in multiple markets. However, this alone will not be enough to ensure your startup hits the mark.
It’s definitely useful to have a name, logo, and reputation that pulls in customers, and it will be tempting to assume that’s all you need.
But is this the right way to branding business? No, it is not.
When customers are ignored, the startups always suffer: they start running out of money and eventually they find out what is missing i.e. brand experience. If you assume that your customers will love your business, you are simply taking a risk that your brand will not reach its target market.
Adding More Customers without Taking Care of the Need of Existing Ones
I have already discussed earlier that entrepreneurs usually put a focus on brand awareness and identity without giving importance to the brand experience. Consequently, many of them spend a lot of time promoting the products that their customers are not even interested in. They start focusing on how many more customers they can add without thinking about whether their present customers love their product or not.
How to Fix These Pitfalls
Now let me tell you the solution.
Here’s how you can fix the above-mentioned issues:
You can be the best person to assess your brand’s experience. To evaluate it, get in touch with real customers. By initiating a customer feedback loop, you not only can evaluate how your customers value your brand, but you also can use their feedback to enhance your brand in a rapid way.
So what questions you should ask customers for improving your brand experience?
Ask your customers how would they feel if they no longer are able to use your products. If they feel unhappy about not being able to use your products, then ask them what benefit they get from your products. Another important question is what alternatives your customers will choose if your products will no longer be available in the market. You can also ask them how they would describe your product to other people and how you can improve your product to meet their needs in a better way.
What are you waiting for? Talk to the customers first and try to find out how to improve before spending all your money on branding. Improving your brand experience is the foremost thing. Stop worrying so much about the ideal brand identity or growing your business till you have established a group of passionate customers. Creating brand recognition starts with nailing the brand experience, then you can give importance to scaling it.
